Friday, January 25, 2013

Women in combat

I'm not going to tell you her name, but I used to be on friendly terms with a rather famous woman. Well...famous in certain circles.

All right, I'll just say it: She became an adult film actress -- a career path she embarked upon some time after I met her. The choice didn't really sit well with me (she could have been a real actress), but at that point, I wasn't in a position to offer advice. When I knew her, she was a college student. Within and without, she was one of the loveliest individuals I've ever known.

Oh lord, she was gorgeous. Still is.

In the mid-1990s, she looked like Natalie Wood in her prime, albeit with a much more voluptuous figure. (The gods, not surgery, made her that way.) If you had met her then, you probably would have considered her a very "girly" girl -- not just because of her looks, but because she always seemed kind and demure and sweet.

Yet I knew something about her that her many fans never learned. Before she want back to college, she did a stint in the Army. In fact, she was an MP.

This curvaceous, charming, honey-voiced heart-breaker knew how to take control of an unruly soldier three times her size.

I've never served in the military. But if I had, I'd have trusted my life to a woman like her. No, I'm not working my way toward a dirty joke. I mean it.

Trusting your life to a female comrade is one thing. The prospect that male colleagues might make poor decisions (or show favoritism) out of emotional attachments to female comrades could conceivably be dangerous.